Oklahoma State's Student Paper Will Charge For Content

Oklahoma State University's student paper will be the first of its kind to charge some readers for content, reports College Media Matters.

Last month, the Daily O'Collegian entered into an agreement with Press Plus, an e-commerce platform, which will allow the publication to charge non-local readers who are unaffiliated with OSU and visit the site more than three times a month.

"We've always known that the content our students produce has value well beyond the free drop distribution of our newspaper," O'Collegian General Manager Ray Catalino said in a press release. "Charging a modest fee to access our online content for non-students who live outside Stillwater helps us foster that belief."

CMM's author, college media guru Dan Reimold, thinks that student publications should avoid erecting paywalls. In a 2010 editorial on Mediashift, Reimold wrote: "With no pressing need to enhance their revenue streams, my advice is: Keep sites free. By offering readers an open window instead of a wall, college media can become more of a trusted, viable alternative to the pro-press pay plans."

Do you think that the O'Collegian made the right decision, or should the paper remain free to all? Let us know in the comments section.

Comments

[JDcorpus]

08:21 PM on 01/04/2011

Wow, I write for the O'Colly and in no way think my content is amazing enough that people would pay to read it. I wasn't even aware we had a website for the first few months I wrote for it. Our overhead is covered by student fees so this is entirely unnecessary to begin with.

[wolfmason]

03:53 PM on 01/04/2011

Ummm, is this part of some academic experiment to see how fast you can kill a paper's circulation? I certainly hope so...

[tweedy54]

09:18 PM on 01/04/2011

Thinking the same thing!

[Dogvane]

03:28 PM on 01/04/2011

OSU thinks it's content is worth paying for? Let the clamor begin!

[Bryan Jordan]

02:10 PM on 01/04/2011

Well, thats one way to make sure people don't read your free newspaper.

[AnthonyRoberts]

02:05 PM on 01/04/2011

Paywalls are a dead concept. Very few publications have content so specific and so valuable that it's worth paying for because it's not available any where else. No college rag does or ever will. If they want to create a revenue stream than sell advertising.

[alexunlv]

01:59 PM on 01/04/2011

lol - You may be able to charge people to read your content - but the issue is not whether it can be done, the issue is whether people will actually pay to read your paper.

I assure you - People will NOT pay to read your paper. Like the rest of the press, you need to come to terms with the Information Age. The times require you to move away from outdated business practices that cannot be applied to current technology trends. You must adapt and innovate - embrace technology and come up with new ways to generate fees.

Sticking to the old business model will leave you, like the others, out of business.

[SoapBox37]

01:57 PM on 01/04/2011

Good luck with that Okies.

You might as well just fold the paper now and get it over with.

[Leviathan21]

01:50 PM on 01/04/2011

Bad, bad decision.

First, a College paper does not have enough of a readership to produce any real revenues. The only non-students who visit are probably parents and friends of the student reporters. They should consider themselves lucky if people are visiting the free site. 

Second, they don't really have a revenue problem. Students work on College papers for free, so it's not like they have salaries to dole out (the General Manager is probably the only salaried person there). The University probably lets them use office space and computers for free. So, they hardly have any expenses. Why do this then? Makes no sense.

[Yam716]

01:14 PM on 01/04/2011

I wish FAMU would...

[AbeMartin]

09:43 AM on 01/04/2011

The Oklahoma State University newspaper is clearly equal to The New York Times, which also announced recently that some of its content will be free.  But, a couple or maybe three questions:  What content do they carry that people will want to pay for?  Stories about players on the OSU Cowboys or Cowgirls varsity teams?  Or, exciting news about agricultural experiments on one of the school's farms?  Also, I wonder just how much revenue they plan to generate?  Will the number of alumni willing to pay for "content" or the number of local advertisers who place ads ("Eat at Eskimo Joe's,"  "Have your new well drilled or your old well deepened by Goobers.") cover the cost of developing and maintaining the website?  This scheme reads as if the paper's faculty advisor tried o work out with the football squad and forgot to where a helmet.

[Malarcus]

08:32 AM on 01/04/2011

Socrates1988 said, "As their general manager says people from outside the immediate region viewing the site more than three time per week is a small fraction of overall readers."

Then what is the point of doing it at all? To generate a tiny amount of money? And what are the consequences to their funding from the state school system?

Furthermore, the GM is talking about the value of the student reporters' work beyond the paper's regular distribution area. However, the value in the vast majority of the cases is simply working and writing for an actual newspaper and gaining knowledge and experience in such a venue. On occasion a wire service will pick up a student's article but that's really about it. Besides, how much of the revenue generated from the paywall is going to go directly the students anyway? So the "value" the GM is referring to is that people who do not live in Stillwater, and who are somehow not Sooner fans, want to keep up with some news about and by OSU. And the GM's grand plan is to charge them for the privilege. This is a bad idea the same as the NYT's paywall, and it is another loss in the war to maintain free and open access to news sources on the internet.

[Socrates1988]

11:36 AM on 01/04/2011

Based on analytic reports I've seen of college papers, we're probably talking about (a lot) less than 10 percent of their total visits (to a site which probably doesn't make a lot of money from advertising). Of that group there're probably people a few people who will pay a small fee. So the GM probably thought it was worth an experiment to see if a pay system could work for hyper-local news that isn't reported on by other outlets (unlike the NYT's national news). They might make enough money to buy an extra software license or repair a broken camera. To a college newsroom that might mean something.

[Fightingformyrights]

05:40 AM on 01/04/2011

I think this is a good idea actually if it is carried out correctly. In college towns across fly over country, the student newspaper has a higher readership from my personal experience. The University is all there is. The sports are college teams, the entertainment all comes to the campus theatre/auditorium. The trends are set here and the population is heavily concentrated in this area.

The trick is that this can't be just a website. It needs to be more like what the wall street journal and New York times are trying just on a smaller less expensive scale. Move to a mobile app format and include juicy pieces that aren't printed... say like interviews with the football team for the 70,000 or so fans that go to the annual homecoming celebration.

Furthermore, in college towns, the university is the big power player in the area. The less financial ties to the university means more freedom. Colleges as most of you know are like small cities and in the smallest of cities, no one expects the daily rag to be owned by the city government.

[Socrates1988]

05:24 AM on 01/04/2011

The paywall likely costs them some hits but not many. As their general manager says people from outside the immediate region viewing the site more than three time per week is a small fraction of overall readers. While college sites get hits (through search engines) from all over the world, loyal readership is typically small, but growing at college papers. The group likely consists mainly of diehard football fans that need every perspective on the team and a small group of parents/alumni that know the student paper has a web site. If the students can make a couple hundred dollars a year off these people: more power to them. If they can’t, then they’ll drop the paywall without much harm.

A college paper can certainly report better on local and city issues, but they people interested in those stories don’t seem to be subject to the paywall. Reimold’s suggestion that college papers can get readers to trust their reporting on national issues seems far-fetched. There are not many issues, which galvanize college students like electing the first black president after an unpopular republican. I’d like to see him post data supporting the claim that national reporting on college sites can bring in more hits than local and campus news about the people reading.

[Howard53545]

04:38 AM on 01/04/2011

No one is going to pay for this rag. Get real dudes, you are not the New York Times!

[Shaun Hensley]

03:40 AM on 01/04/2011

They might as well charge a million dollars.